
In rural North Dakota, an old, coal-fired power plant is being retrofitted to capture emissions before they enter the atmosphere and store them underground. $890 million from the 2022 bipartisan infrastructure law will go towards that and two similar projects in California and Texas. Critics take issue with spending taxpayer money to kick the tires on “carbon capture and storage” technology. Among those critics are Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former minister of environment and climate change. She’s now CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions, an advisory firm, and chairs the UN’s expert group on net-zero commitments.


Why carbon capture isn’t a magic bullet solution to the climate crisis

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Proceeding without permission is a time-tested practice in some corners of Silicon Valley. Well, it’s not working out so well for OpenAI. Actress Scarlett Johansson said this week the company approached her twice to voice a new AI assistant for ChatGPT-4o. She declined, only to find it had used a voice that sounds “eerily” like hers. Plus, on Capitol Hill, a House subcommittee held a hearing that could decide the future of Section 230, the provision that largely governs the internet today. We’ll explain why chatbots have entered the chat on Section 230’s future.
But first, a new report by former tech company officials and academic researchers finds far-right extremist militias are once again organizing on Facebook ahead of November’s presidential election. They recommend platforms ramp up content moderation to avoid fueling political violence. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, for her take on this week’s tech news.
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Tech Bytes — Week in Review: Online extremism, Section 230, and ScarJo vs. OpenAI

Ever since NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars three years ago, it’s been collecting rocks and soil from the red planet. The plan was for NASA to send a robotic spacecraft to Mars to bring those samples back to Earth, but the agency has now scrapped those plans thanks to a ballooning price tag and extensive delays. With no way of getting to Mars on its own, NASA is hoping to hitch a ride with private space companies to finish the mission. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Kenneth Chang, science reporter at The New York Times, about NASA’s difficulties on Mars and its partnerships with the private sector.
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NASA scrapped the next phase of its Mars mission. Now what?


The internet today is largely governed by 26 words in the Communications Decency Act, signed on Feb. 8, 1996, by then-President Bill Clinton. “Today, with the stroke of a pen, our laws will catch up with our future,” he proclaimed during the signing of the act. The web has changed a bit since then. But Section 230 of that law has not. Today, social media companies routinely use Section 230 to protect themselves from liability over what users post. Now, an internet scholar wants to change that. Will Oremus wrote about him for The Washington Post.
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A professor tries to turn the tables on Section 230’s web protections

There was a time when pollsters went door to door to figure out what people were thinking. Gallup did that for almost 50 years, before switching mostly to telephones by the mid-’80s. Phone polling was cheaper but still reliable. That is, until the cellphone came along. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup, about the complexities of reaching people to get their views. His company stopped doing presidential horse-race polling in 2012, but still asks Americans for their views on the sitting president and topics ranging from immigration to inflation.
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Why cellphones — and trust — may be affecting polling data



If you drive 45 miles north of Little Rock, Arkansas, you’ll come across a facility packed with thousands of computers trying to “mine” the next bitcoin. The popular cryptocurrency’s value recently shot past $60,000 per bitcoin. Mining those bitcoins is a lucrative operation, and several crypto mining outfits have moved to the state since the passage of the Arkansas Data Centers Act last year, also known as the “right-to-mine” bill. Similar bills giving crypto mining operations protections from local regulations have popped up a couple of states. But it turns out residents don’t particularly welcome many of these operations. And Arkansas recently changed course and restored to municipalities the ability to regulate crypto miners. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently spoke with Gabriel Dance, senior deputy investigations editor at The New York Times, about the crypto mining situation in Arkansas. He explained what the biggest complaints have been since these mining operations moved in.
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Why carbon capture isn’t a magic bullet solution to the climate crisis

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